Benjamin Henry Latrobe

Benjamin Henry Latrobe

Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764-1820), English-born American architect, was the first professionallytrained architect to practice in the United States. He worked in a variety of styles.

Benjamin Henry Latrobe was born in England of Moravian parents. He was educated in England, France, and Germany, and as head draftsman in the office of the London architect Samuel Pepys Cockerell he participated in such large projects as the Admiralty Buildings in London. His coming to American was something of an accident; his young wife died, architectural commissions were few because of the Napoleonic Wars, and he had an inheritance to claim in Pennsylvania.

Latrobe arrived in Norfolk, Va., in 1796 and was soon recognized by Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and other prominent people as the ablest architect on the American scene. For the rest of his life he had many commissions in every part of the country.

In his works Latrobe displayed an amazing versatility and command of every current idiom. He undertook engineering projects, from waterworks in Philadelphia and New Orleans to a dry dock for the first American "mothball fleet." He executed private houses, banks, exchanges, theaters, churches, Masonic halls, and Federal commissions— he gave the Capitol and the White House in Washington their polished forms. He did college buildings, lighthouses, tombstones, statue pedestals, and furniture. His houses varied from the geometric simplicity of "Adena" (Chillicothe, Ohio, 1805-1806) to the Adamesque-Federal elegance of
Henry Clay's "Ashland" (Lexington, Ky., ca. 1812, later altered) to the Gothic style of "Sedgeley" (outside Philadelphia, ca. 1800).

On some public buildings—the Virginia Penitentiary in Richmond (1797) and the Center Station Pumping House in Philadelphia (1799), for instance—Latrobe worked in broad geometric forms expressive of utilitarian function inspired by Claude Nicolas Ledoux's rational classicism in France. On others, such as the Bank of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (1798), where Latrobe ingeniously combined the first Greek revival portico in America with a Pantheon-like Roman dome, and the Custom House in New Orleans (1807-1809), he played with subtle spatial combinations of forms in the manner of Sir John Soane, whose English Regency elegance he undoubtedly knew.

But Latrobe also showed himself aware of and competent in the new 19th-century concept of architecture as the art of creating images of ideological conviction by means of historic styles eclectically borrowed for historical association. In 1808 he proposed a library for Congress to be built on the model of an Egyptian hypostyle hall, presumably in allusion to the wisdom of the ages kept therein. The furniture he designed for the White House (1809-1810) and the close approximation to a Greek Doric facade he executed for Pavilion X of the University of Virginia (ca. 1817) were appropriate because, as Latrobe explained in an Anniversary Oration before the Society of Artists in Philadelphia in 1811, a new Greece was developing "in the woods of America."

At the same time, Latrobe was introducing the Gothic style in designs for the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Baltimore (1805), Christ Church in Washington (1808), St. Paul's in Alexandria, Va. (ca. 1816), and the Bank of Philadelphia (1807; demolished). Of these, his plans for the Baltimore Cathedral were perhaps the most important historically, for more than usual symbolic significance attached to this building. As the seat of what had once been the governing Catholic diocese of all the English provinces, it was a reminder of the important role that Catholics had played in building America. Latrobe submitted two sets of plans for the Baltimore Cathedral, one in Gothic style, the other an adaptation of the Pantheon in Rome. In discussions of their relative merits, hardly any weight was put on esthetic value; the whole question was whether Gothic, as symbolic of a Church "the same yesterday, today, and forever," was more suitable than Roman. Roman won out simply because Gothic could not match its combination of "patriotic American" and "loyal Roman Catholic" symbolism.

But Latrobe was too fundamentally versatile ever to accept the Greek revival symbolism unreservedly. Hence his disagreement with Jefferson over the dome of the House of Representatives, Jefferson wanting (and getting, in the original version) a grand symbolic shape, Latrobe advocating a more practical functional construction, and reverting to it when called back to rebuild the destroyed dome in 1815. Hence his failure in the Second Bank of the United States Competition in 1818, which William Strickland won with a "pure Grecian" design. This led to Latrobe's departure for New Orleans, where he died 2 years later.

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Latrobe, Benjamin Henry Boneval

Latrobe, Benjamin Henry Boneval (1764–1820). English-born Moravian architect of French descent, educated in England and Saxony (where he absorbed many advanced ideas, partly through Freemasonry), who introduced an advanced, austere Neo-Classicism to the USA. He was a pupil of S. P. Cockerell before setting up his own office in 1790 from which he designed Hammerwood Lodge, East Grinstead, Sussex (1792), an essay in Neo-Classicism with an unfluted version of the ‘primitive’ PaestumOrder of Doric, much influenced by French architects such as Ledoux. He also designed Ashdown House, Forest Row, Sussex (1793), a beautiful building having a projecting Greek Ionic circular porch with Coade-stone details. These are two of the most remarkable houses for their date in the British Isles, and show Latrobe to have been in the vanguard of Neo-Classicism, far more adventurous than any of his better-known contemporaries in England.

He emigrated to America in 1796, where, through his Freemasonic connections, he met George Washington and acquired a wide circle of influential friends. He made his mark with the very advanced Richmond Penitentiary (1797), which incorporated many of Jefferson's ideas, and then with the Bank of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (1798), the first great monument of the Greek Revival in the USA. In the following year he designed Sedgeley, a house for William Crammond on the banks of the River Schuylkill, the first Gothic Revival domestic building in the USA (destroyed). In 1803 he was appointed Surveyor of Public Buildings by Jefferson, and worked on the Capitol in Washington, DC, creating some of the finest Neo-Classical rooms in America (reconstructed with modifications after its destruction by the British in the War of 1812–15), and inventing American ClassicalOrders such as the corn-cob and tobacco capitals. He also advised Jefferson on the design of the University of Virginia (1817–26), and should be given credit for what is one of the most beautiful architectural ensembles in the USA. His best complete work is the RC Cathedral, Baltimore (1804–18), with segmental coffered vaults, minimalist Classicism, and shallow-domed ceilings as severe as any of their date. He contributed to the design of gardens, including that of the White House, Washington, DC. The Louisiana State Bank, New Orleans (1820), was his last building, but it was still faithful to the dignified polished Classicism he had introduced to his adopted country. His pupils included Mills and Strickland.

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Latrobe, Benjamin Henry

The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.

Copyright The Columbia University Press

Benjamin Henry Latrobe (Benjamin Henry Boneval Latrobe) (lətrōb´), 1764–1820, American architect, b. Yorkshire, England. He is considered the first professional architect in the United States. Latrobe received his training both in architecture and in engineering in England and Germany and then practiced successfully in London. He came to the United States in 1796. He practiced there and in Richmond until 1799, when he went to Philadelphia. In 1803, President Jefferson appointed him surveyor of public buildings. Besides building residences in Washington, Philadelphia, and other cities, Latrobe did much monumental work and introduced Greek forms, an important element of the classic revival. His design (1799) for the Bank of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia was modeled after a Greek Ionic temple. This building and his Roman Catholic cathedral in Baltimore (1805–18)—the first cathedral built in the United States—make a group expressive of the best monumental architecture of the time. Other works are St. John's Church in Washington, D.C. (1816) and the penitentiary in Richmond, Va. (1797–1800). His design for
"Sedgeley"
(1800), a residence near Philadelphia, is supposed to be the first executed example of the Gothic revival in the country. After the burning of the Capitol he was engaged, from 1815 to 1817, in rebuilding it. Latrobe's son Henry had been sent to New Orleans to construct the city's waterworks after his father's design, but he died of yellow fever in 1817. In 1818, Latrobe sailed to New Orleans to complete the project, bringing his family overland in 1820. He too died of yellow fever. Latrobe's other sons were John H. B. Latrobe and Benjamin Henry Latrobe, 1806–78, an engineer, b. Philadelphia. He served (1847–75) as chief engineer of the Baltimore & Ohio RR, laying out the line between Washington and Baltimore.

See Latrobe's diary of his trips to New Orleans and his stay there, Impressions respecting New Orleans (ed. by S. Wilson, Jr., 1951); study by T. Hamlin (1955).

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Latrobe, Benjamin Henry

Latrobe, Benjamin Henry (1766–1820) US architect, b. England. He emigrated to the USA in 1796. He designed the neo-classical cathedral in Baltimore (1806–18), and worked on rebuilding the Capitol in Washington, D.C. (1815–17).

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